What’s for Dinner :: Roast Chicken Thighs

Picture this : An ordinary weekday night, a pack of frozen chicken thighs thawing on the counter, a couple of half-finished jars of condiments and sauces, some vegetables in the fridge that were bought while feeling ambitious for healthy-eating, a bored toddler glued to your legs, and about an hour to turn it all into dinner — not the toddler, just the ingredients.

Roast chicken with veggies has become my savior weeknight meal. It takes such a short time to put everything together in the roasting pan and then pop it in the oven, and finally detach said dangling toddler from the leg and attend to his qualms. The beauty of this meal is in the variation of it; I have done it with all cuts of chicken, sometimes with just squeezes of lemon and dashes of pepper, other times going fancy and crusting it with parmesan, or just glazing it with some honey or bbq sauce. As much as I have always wished and secretly prayed, there are never any leftovers for my lunch the next day (sad me).

Although I am constantly trying new recipes for my roast chicken night, there are a couple of favorites that I want to share with you all. Excuse the bad-lit, grainy photos as they are probably a month old when I wasn’t planning on sharing this on the blog. But the goodness of food always needs to be shared, so here I am… doing just that. Other easy weeknight dinner recipes here and here.

Roasted Lemon Chicken Thighs with Potatoes

Or in other words: blistered, charred chicken with golden, crusty goodness of potatoes. This one is for those nights when you are craving for something yummy but don’t have the time or energy to do anything fancy to the chicken: like marination or dipping and crusting and coating etc. Lately, I have been obsessed with cooking with lemons, and the combination of lemon with chicken and potatoes is just hard to beat. Serve it up with a simple garden salad or green beans.

YOU WILL NEED:

1 kg chicken thighs or whole legs

4 large potatoes — peeled, cubed and half boiled

1/4 cup olive oil

1 large lemon, sliced

8-10 garlic gloves, peeled and halved

1 tsp dried herbs

salt and pepper

HOW TO MAKE:

Preheat oven to 425F. Heat the olive oil in a roasting pan on stove top. Season chicken thighs with salt and pepper. Sear the chicken thighs, skin down in the pan for about 5-7 minutes, until the skin is golden brown. Turn them over, add potatoes, lemon slices, garlic, herbs. Toss it all around so that everything gets covered with the oil.

Put the pan in the oven to continue cooking the chicken from inside and roasting the potatoes, about 30 minutes. Remove from oven and let the chicken rest for 5 minutes before serving.

BBQ-glazed chicken legs with Parmesan roasted Carrots

The second chicken recipe that I am going to share probably doesn’t even qualify as a recipe since it uses only two ingredients: BBQ sauce and chicken (plus some olive oil, salt and pepper). Use a good quality BBQ sauce and you will get yourself the most perfectly glazed, sweet, sticky and tender BBQ glazed chicken legs!

I made it with a side of Parmesan roasted carrots, which were definitely the best carrots I have ever had!

FOR THE CHICKEN:

YOU WILL NEED:

1 kg chicken legs or thighs

1 cup BBQ sauce

olive oil, salt and pepper

HOW TO MAKE:

Preheat oven to 400F. Coat the chicken with olive oil and season well with salt and pepper. Place the chicken, skin side down, in the roasting pan and bake for 25 mins.

Take it out and turn up the oven to 425F.

Baste the top of the chicken with BBQ sauce with a brush. Turn it over and baste the other side. Put it back in the oven for 5 mins. Repeat this process one more time, basting with some more BBQ sauce to enhance the flavor and stickiness.

Garlic Parmesan Roasted Carrots

Garlic Parmesan roasted carrots is a great side dish to any roast chicken or fish dinner.

YOU WILL NEED:

5-6 large carrots, peeled and sliced into thick fingers

2 tbsp melted salted butter

2 cloves garlic, minced

3 tbsp grated parmesan cheese

1 tsp dried herbs

HOW TO MAKE:

Preheat oven to 400F. Mix together the butter, garlic and herbs. Toss the carrots in this mixture.

Take a roasting pan and coat lightly with butter. Arrange carrots on it. Drizzle garlic butter mixture on top of carrots. Roast for 15 minutes. Sprinkle parmesan cheese on the carrots and roast for another 10 minutes until the cheese melts and slightly browned. Remove from oven and serve.

Lemme know if you try any of these out! And share your easy, week night dinners below in the comments. I am always looking for new ideas to try. 🙂